DAWN
Tuesday Review, Aug 20-26, 1996
PROFILE: PERVEZ
MALIK
Light, Camera, Action
Afternoon, March 16, 1966.
Naz Cinema, Karachi. The scene opens on a night club.
The atmosphere is lively with a band, drums and the guitar.
Young couples are shown taking to the floor, gyrating to the
Western music. The camera tilts right to show a young man (black
suit, with his back to the camera), probably finishing off his
coke, while his stooge tries to draw his attention to the "beauties"
on the floor. The young man is apparently not too interested.
(Cut to the next shot). Another part of the club. The camera
now shows us the entire orchestra. Suddenly our young man enters
the frame from the left, and starts singing (playback, Ahmed
Rushdi): Meray khayalon pay chhai hai ik soorat mutwali
si... Kokokorina, kokokorina!
Thus, on the ninth minute of the
first public screening of Arman, the fourth venture
of Film Arts, the history of the Pakistan film industry was
re-written.
Pervez
Malik, the director, says, "While I was
studying film at California University (1960-63), I kept on
analyzing the state of the Pakistani cinema. I was especially
interested in music, and there was nobody there to teach me
how to film a song for an Indo-Pakistani audience. When I came
back, Waheed Murad -- my friend since school -- was busy producing,
and starring in, Heera Aur Pathar. He was not sure
whether or not my American credentials would be good enough
for bringing success to a Pakistani movie. So he asked me to
hang around for a while, and study the local style of film making
while he tried to get on with someone else. I almost dissociated
myself in disappointment, but a few days later he came to my
house and asked me to direct his film. (Apparently, Waheed was
not satisfied with the work of his director). I tried to reconcile
with them first, and on failing I took up the megaphone. The
concept of Heera Aur Pathar had already taken shape by that
time, so that I was not able to change everything, only embellish
whatever had been given to me… I inserted a few sequences
and altered some others, asking Musroor Anwar, the songwriter,
to pen the dialogues for these. I realized that he was as good
a dialogue writer as he was as a poet…
"The basic function of a
director is to visualize his own film before it comes into being.
For instance, when I used to picturise the songs, first we would
all discussit - myself, the songwriter, the music director.
But it is the music director who gives the final ‘pieces’.
I listen to the music, trying to get the mood of each piece.
For instance, if a piece suggests movement, I would film it
in a moving shot. If I film it with a static shot, it won’t
give the right effect. So, I would concentrate on the song,
playing it in my mind like background music, trying to catch
whatever would come, until I could almost ‘see’
something. Then I would go to the location. You juxtapose your
vision upon the location and you actually get the shots. Finally,
I would sit down, correlating every individual piece in the
music to a specific shot, and working out the details of each:
the artists’ position, the camera angle, the frame, and
so on. Direction is something about realizing your vision on
the silver screen."
A
critic’s comment: "Pervez seems to
be especially fond of ‘movement shots’ in his songs,
and also of songs picturised on a mobile vehicle. Almost all
his early films contain examples of these -- perhaps the most
well-remembered one being Mujhee talash thee jis ki
from Jahan Tum Wahan Hum (1967) -- if you live in Karachi,
then you may be one of the thousands who recall it every time
they get into a Victoria." Another famous, but not quite
‘fashionable’ one would be Mujhe tum say mohabbat
hai, filmed on a donkey-cart! This lilting number occurred
in Pervez’s very first release.
Pervez
says: "Heera Aur Pathar was a
success, but my directorial innovations went unnoticed by the
Press or by the film community. Nodody turned around to say
‘who is this Pervez Malik?' When our team (the famous
four of the sixties: Waheed, Pervez, Musroor and Sohail Rana,
the music composer) took up Arman, I came back with
a vengeance, determined to do something that would force everyone
to take notice. This time, I was working on a fresh project,
so I had the liberty…"
A
critic’s view: "The rest is history.
Arman was the first Pakistani film to celebrate a Platinum
Jubilee (75 weeks). It created the legend of the chocolate hero;
and Waheed became the heart throb of thousands. Arman
is definitely wrothy of being considered for other merits as
well. The song sequence Jab pyaar mien do dil miltay hain
is a masterpiece of symbolic filmmaking… When a person
is photographed between bars, it signifies depression or misfortune.
Pervez has made extensive use of this convention in his early
movies, especially in this song sequence."
Pervez
says, "After the record breaking response
to Arman, we became rather careful not to become captives of
our own success. We knew that if we make another love story,
no matter how good, people will say: this is not better that
Arman. So we decided to make a film about the problems
faced by young widows… Ihsan (1967) was quite
an unconventional film (in the sense that its heroine is not
just a widow, but she is also the mother of a seven or eight-year-old
girl when she first appears in the film.)"
Doraha (1967), Pervez’s
own production in partnership with Sohail was, comparatively
speaking, a flop.
"I do not blame Sohail. He
gave nine songs in that film, and all of them were hits. It
was all my fault. I had become too much obsessed with my feats
of directorial innovations. In Doraha I filmed songs in a manner
which fascinates people even today, after a lapse of almost
thirty years. I introduced a fresh approach towards camera movement,
cutting, editing, and so on. But in the process of doing that,
I allowed myself to ignore one most important aspect of filmmaking:
the script. I had read a short story in the Reader’s
Digest about a singer who dies. We got it adapted for the
screen, but we introduced a side character, a lively girl.
"In order to satisfy her,
we kept the hero alive after his beloved is married away, and
had him survive the wounds the acquires while saving the life
of her husband. This, saving the heor’s life proved fatal
for our film. This was the greatest flaw in the story, and ruined
the effect.
"I learnt more from the failure
of Doraha than I had from the success of Arman.
I sat down and analysed the situation. Meanwhile, I happened
to be present at the screening of a Shabab Kiranvi film, which
used the most basic technique of all, a fire place in the middle,
camera shot, hero enters from right, heroine enters from left,
they speak, he goes back his way, she exits the fram from her
side. There is nothing more basic than this. That film was a
success, nevertheless. Now just think about Doraha
I reached upon this conclusion: clever photography is no substitute
for a good story. Consequently my next venture was Saughat
(without Waheed Murad, for a change!), where my techniques were
much simpler as compared to Doraha, but which had a
stronger storyline. I allowed the subject matter to become more
prominent than my ‘technique’. I think this is how
it should be. A director should not draw attention to himself.
In a well-directed film, you should hardly think about the director’s
work while you are watching the film. He should give you everything
just as you need it - close-up, etc. You leave with an overall
impact, and that’s all.
"But this is not always easy.
Quite often we (the directors) are carried away by a desire
to show off. We get praised Wah, wah, Kya shot hai
-- but that is, strictly speaking, against the basic principles
of direction. My next venture was Mere Hamsafar (1972).
Our unit went to Europe, England, France, Holland -- for the
first time. It had a very good musical score from Sohail, but
suffered from a mismatch: when Sohail was preparing the score
he had Waheed in mind, who was going to be the hero of this
film. Due to certain differences which grew later on, Waheed’s
role was given to Muhammad Ali. I think Ali Bhai did a good
job too, in spite of the fact that the songs were tailor-made
for Waheed -- not just the composition by Sohail, but also the
rendering by Ahmed Rushdi, who had this flair for singing songs
in a manner that would suit the specific actor who was to play
it. It is a fact that when he would sing for Waheed, it seemed
as if Waheed himself was singing.
"Ahmed Rushdi was the king
of expressions. I won’t say he was fond of acting, but
he had this natural talent of expressing himself in voice as
well as expression -- as you could see from his later
appearances on the television."
A
critic’s comments: "Most of Pervez
Malik’s early films are distinctly divided into two halves.
A commercial, entertaining first half and a dard, tense, second
half."
Pervez
says: "This was a formula. A binding. Those
days people just expected to be entertained in the first half
and then weep in the second."
A
critic's comment: "Pervez made this formula
stand on its head in Mehman (1977)…"
Pervez
says: "If you get a story which demands
something else, then you to… This film was based on a
novel by Salma Kanwal. The novel begins with a tragedy, so the
first half of my film was tragic. In this case the second half
was romantic."
A
critic’s comment: In the early eighties,
Pervez Malik surpassed his own Arman with Anmol, which ran for
118 weeks in Karachi. It is ironic, because Anmol (although
quite entertaining in its own right) was not even comparable
with Arman or to the earlier Pervez Malik hits in terms of finesse.
It seems he wants to be one with the Lahore film industry. However,
the film had a haunting musical score by Nisar Bazmi.
After Anmol came Dushman
(1974), Pehchan (1975), Intikhab (1977), Qurbani (1981)
and several others. Qurbani is regarded as his best,
even by Pervez himself, on the basis of its strong screenplay.
But none of these films reflect the touch of Pervez Malik.
Ghareebon Ka Badshah,
one of the most successful movies of the latter part of his
career has a few sequences which really move us -- such as when
the advocate recognises the dead body of his lost daughter,
the girl he had unknowingly allowed to get raped. But, on the
whole, the film sufferes from poor direction and crude sensationalism
being passed off as social message.
The director who had intrigued
a people with Arman, and bravely defied all conventions of the
Pakistani cinema with Doraha, now, had apparently compromised
with the degenerate industry, although it was a compromise much
on his own terms. When did the downward slide begin? As a critic,
I would say the heartening success of Anmol, back in 1973, was
a thin veneer over the greatest defeat of Pervez Malik: his
decision to compromise.
Pervez
says: "In my life, Anmol is a
significant movie for two reasons. Firstly, that was a lean
period of my life. In spite of my early success there came a
period when things became difficult for two or three years.
For some reason people had spread rumours about me in Lahore.
I was not getting the response which I felt I deserved from
the trade. So I was planning a comeback, to make a film that
would divert attention back to me. Secondly, my producer Anis
Dossani had returned from East Pakistan after having lost everything
there (in the tragedy of 1971). Once he was a millionaire, a
big businessman, but now he did not even have the funds needed
to make a single film. He arranged funds with great difficulty.
So, I was very careful about making something that would be
a ‘sure shot’. I spent a long time searching for
a suitable plot. The character we created for Shabnam was a
contrast to the docilemale character that was played by Shahid.
It was also a total change for Shabnam. She had come with a
very soft image. Now, I asked her to paint an entirely different
character."
A
critic’s comment: "Three of the ‘famous
four’ turned outwardly patriotic around (or before) mid-seventies.
Sohail had already left filmdom to devote himself to national
and children’s songs. Musroor got famous for Sohni
Dharti (incidentally, once again, a Sohail Rana composition).
Pervez turned into something like a social reformer and a patriotic
propagandist. Dushman (1974) included a national song,
Pechan 1976 was about the blessings of the village
life, and included family planning propaganda while Intikhab
was a children’s movie (a spin off from The Sounds
of Music.) The more recent ventures such as Gumnam,
Kamyabi, Ghareebon Ka Badshah were all recognized by the
government as some sort of social service and consequently received
tax exemption from the Federal Government.
Pervez
says, "I thought I must show my gratitude
to the Almighty for granting me the success that I got. Even
in my early films, I had always been prepared to include any
nice things that I could. Later on, I realized there are so
many problems in our collective life, which have never been
filmed. The government, the politicians were always saying that
islahi films are never made here. So I decided to make them,
but there is no recognition. After having made seven films on
national issues, I say it is a thankless job. I lost out on
finances, there was no support from the government. Tax exemption
is a joke. They send you a letter, stating that the Government
of Pakistan is pleased to exempt you from tax, etc, etc. But
this letter is issued by the Central Government. You then have
to take it to the provincial government, and beg them to exempt
you from tax which they refuse. I got exemption four times,
but I can tell you that the financial gain of this was, literally,
zero. When I received exemption for Kamayabi, I am on record
for returning the letter to the government, saying, I thank
you, but this letter of yours is an insult to the Central Government
as well as to me, personally. But we were talking about my turning
to social issues in my films. Someone once told me, ‘Pervez
Saheb, your rizq is haram,’ I said to
him, and then I repeated this in the convention held by Ziaul
Haque, that, if my films increase vulgarity, obscenity and bay-hayai
in the society, then it is not just haram but also
hellfire for me. But if, in my whole life, I could reform even
a single person through my films, then it is not just halal
for me, it is also ibadat (worship)."
A
critic’s comments: "The real value
of our filmmakers’s claims to making ‘movies with
a cause’ is moderated by the fact that the themes seldom
go beyond abstract slogans. Hence in Kamayabi, we have
patriotism defined as the love of the soil, whatever that might
mean, whereas Ghareebon ka Badshah tries to symbolize
the issue of ethnicity through five neighbours living together
-- thus reducing the art of film to the level of a high-school
pantomime. It's ironic, if not depressing, that a learned person
like Pervez Malik (also a worthy recipient of the President’s
Pride of Performance Award) should interpret ‘national
awakening’ in these terms and never speak of issues like
democracy, human rights freedom of expression…
Pervez
says, "such issues are rather too advanced.
They come later, only in a free society. Now your courts are
discussing them, but such issues have political overtones, whereas
I have always wished to avoid it. Since you have to get your
film passed by the censor and every government has its own policy,
so you cannot say a controversial thing -- even if it were true.
So, you must turn back to the safe avenues -- such as the love
of one’s homeland, or that playing up of ethnicity is
a dangerous thing, as I did say in Ghareebon ka Badshah.
As far as democracy is concerned, we have always had strange
situations in our country. There have been periods of dictatorship,
and periods of democratic governments. There has never been
a stable democratic government for such a long period as to
make such issues possible in films."
